This book is based on a PhD dissertation submitted to the
University of Toronto in 2009. It contains seven chapters, three
appendixes, a bibliography, and three indexes (covering Qur’anic
verses, hadiths, names, and terms). The author argues
that Mulla Sadra’s Qur’anic hermeneutics marks ‘the first time in
the history of Islamic thought that a philosopher had undertaken
such a wide-scale commentary upon the Qurʾān’ (3). What the author
means by philosophy in his book is mystic thought. This claim is
interesting all the more so because a gap exists in research in the
field of mystic Qur’anic hermeneutics. However, the author
endeavours to support this thesis with a clear and compelling
argument. The volume is torn between being a title on mercy, Mulla
Sadra’s mystic views, and Qur’anic hermeneutics. In my view, the
author should have chosen one of these topics to develop rather
than tackling all of them in 170 pages. Inevitably, the author had
to select a preference; he devoted most of his efforts to describe
Mulla Sadra’s mystic thought. The latter is unveiled through Mulla
Sadra’s commentary on Surat al-Fatihah. As for the problem of
mercy, it is treated only in few pages, when dealing with
soteriology (101-105); little is said about Qur’anic
hermeneutics.

Accordingly, the seven chapters give an overview of Mulla
Sadra’s ontology. The first chapter, entitled ‘Qurʾānic
hermeneutics’, is dedicated to the relationship between the Qur’an
and being. In such a chapter, the reader would expect a discussion
of the rules of exegesis applied by Mulla Sadra in his commentary.
If the exegete does not explicitly present these rules, then the
researcher has to deduce them from the commentary itself. The
author did not tread any of these paths. Instead, he discusses
Mulla Sadra’s view of being. The second chapter on formal
considerations is quite informative as it traces the sources of
Mulla Sadra’s interpretation of Q. 1. Indeed, the author displays
critical sense here showing several ideas and even paragraphs Mulla
Sadra reproduced from Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240 ce) without acknowledging
the source. By the same token, the author is also able to criticize
Mulla Sadra for compiling so many materials in his commentary.
However, in the following chapter on metaphysics, the author
resumes the exposition of Mulla Sadra’s views on divine essence,
largely based on Ibn ‘Arabi’s interpretation of divine names. The
same stands in the fourth chapter on cosmology where the author
discusses Ibn ‘Arabi’s idea on the Perfect Man as perceived by
Mulla Sadra. Although the reader might enjoy reading these flashes
of mystic thought, it is still not the topic announced in the
introduction. The author entitles the fifth chapter ‘Theology’
while it discusses the divine essence and the Perfect Man. Both
topics were covered previously in metaphysics and cosmology. The
sixth and the seventh chapters are dedicated to soteriology while,
in fact, they discuss, mostly, being and the divine essence.

The author’s method is philological, based on the description,
translation and identification of sources. Sometimes, he provides
translations of important passages of Mulla Sadra’s commentary.
Usually, he paraphrases translated passages and does not proceed to
the analysis of concepts or to a constructed argument. Mulla
Sadra’s mystic thought – non-systematic by nature – leads the way.
The author’s voice becomes louder only when he identifies the
sources of Mulla Sadra, a task which he achieves with success.
Additionally, three appendixes are included. The first contains
translations from Mulla Sadra’s Mafatih al-Ghayb, and
contains a few passages on the notion of allegoric interpretation
(ta’wil), as endorsed by mystics. Calling this Mulla
Sadra’s theory of Qur’anic hermeneutics, as did the author, is an
overstatement. This could have been a chance to take Mulla Sadra’s
commentary for what it is, an esoteric exegesis.

The translated passages display mystic views of the Qur’an in
relation to man, God, and the universe. At best, Mafatih
al-Ghayb is a reflection on the Qur’an and not on the rules
to interpret it. The next appendix consists of 18 pages of
key...

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